Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

Originally Posted by Machine

There was, but peoples got bored after 2 years of whining, and just accepted that rogues will be OP rest of WoWs life.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander... everyone knows that spriest survivability is horrid... this is one way to fix it... its not OP, it's simple a tool that should be available to priests to live.

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

I think really they are going about all of this all kinds of wrong.

Fixing shadow in PvP is very, very easy - every problem we have is really just the result of two simple problems, when in melee we have no way to escape, and we are the frailest cloth class in the game.

To escape melee Fade should make us Blink (possibly backwards 25yds kind of thing).
To be tougher in melee Shadowform should be more effective versus melee damage (try 25% instead of 15%).

You do those two simple changes, and suddenly Shadow becomes an effective PvP class which is not an instagib in Arenas or BG's.

I did Arenas on monday with a DK partner, I am in full epics from 25mans in a Sarth+3D guild, I have roughly 22k hp but only about 100resil. Consistently the problem was the same, no matter what we did - every team went straight for me and killed me within seconds without a solution we could come up with.

But the best example of what's wrong with us is this, we went up against a Ret/Mut team, I actually saw the rogue at my side before he hit me but he got a cold blood ambush in on my for about 4k5 - fortunately my seeing him had made my Dispersion finger twitch and I instantly dispersed before he landed any further hits.
Now your probably thinking - "ok - your safe for the moment, so what did your teammate do to peel?"
Listen to this, the ret ran straight to me, and the rogue continued to dps despite Dispersion. Remember that I was still at about 17k5 hp when I Dispersed, reducing all incoming damage by 90% for 6 seconds (~157k effective hp).
Through dispersion their continued DPS pounded me such that by the time I came out of Dispersion - even though I actually managed to get a Shield up (5-6k damage), it appeared/felt that I died instantly - dispersion ended, shield graphic didnt even load, dead priest.

All that said I agree with Cleir, the very best solution that Blizzard could practically offer Shadow is to not put their big, greasy fingers anywhere near it - give us Dual Specs in 3.1 - and we can all become Disc Priests for PvP.

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

Sry SkillOverKill but your missing the ret paladin's damage, he probably used his wings so he ignores 50% of your damage reduction Dispersion. Add up if the paladin lands a crit his judgment or divine storm he'll do 40% extra damage on ya :/

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

in 2.4 I was in love with the SP. I didn't care I only did 1600 dps at a stretch. I loved all of sunwell. muru being my fav fight. the mass dispell of us 2 SP's really made it enjoyable. server 1st vent screams won't be forgotten for a while

in 3.0 I hated it. It was hard to sustain our mana completely relying on the single pot we had fiend and dispersion aswell as not being able to pickup meditation. I went over to my resto druid and luckily my guild let me raid MH/BT/Sunwell with her

once at 80 with more spirit on gear and back to 14/0/57 things were getting better. dps was getting near competitive on most fights and fights like sarth 3d I really started to shine.

now in 3.0.8 I'm at the top of the dps charts. things are good. I love it again. There is nothing I would change about it.

hymm of hope is neither here nor there. it's not used. I doubt it would be even if it was instant cast and disc. Some fights I'm not even fiending as mana is just not an issue.

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

The only problem I have with Ghostcrawler's post is that he only mentioned that survivability will get a buff. That's all good and well, but I have bigger concerns about mana issues, dot protection and being way too easy to lock down. On the other hand, i think they know about those as well.

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

it's probably going to be some more passive resistance through shadowform, or some improvement of dispersion (i doubt it'll be the life regen since it was given to mages...)

but what i'd really like instead is either some more mobility, like fade making us immune to movement impairing effects for the whole duration, making it difficult for melee to train us, or some burst, for example dispersion making us immune to ccs and allowing for casts, it'd be almost as overpowered as rogues pounding on us with cloak of shadows on :P

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

Current 3.1 list of things to "look at". Which means probably will be changed, but no promises and time issues may interrupt or cut short the work suggested.

- [Shadow]Priests will get some better PVP survivability. Changes to dispersion seems likely.

- Holypriests may get PVP viable beyond "good at dying". No details or timeline given.

- Discipline will get more benefits for stacking spirit; it's currently a borderline "avoid" stat. My guess is that Spiritual Guidance may get moved higher up in the holy tree.

- Discipline priest shields may become stackable in some way. This is currently killing disc priest stackability.

- Disc Tree around 21 pt talent will be changed somehow. ImpDS in particular seems like a strong candidate for change.

- Holy will get some new combo mechanics to break up the eternal flash heal spamming. Example given of a fun mechanic that they were explicitly not going to implement but was the kind of thing they were looking at was to allow flash heal to lower the cast time of the next gheal. Anything which gives incentive to use multiple spells more and combo bonuses for f.ex using a ProM on a renew'ed person. Not given if this is in place until 3.1, probably not.

- Holy priests may get a niche, something we are good at. "We understand that you want to be good at something [beyond not bad at anything]. Message recieved, loud and clear". . My guess: This something will probably not be raidhealing, but anything can happen.

- Renew may be rebalanced and/or get more talents benefitting it. It's currently just a bad spell.

- Binding heal manacost may get nudged in a favorable way. Only a slight possibility of this happening, imo.

- Lightwell is still a target of cheap jokes and ridicule despite being proven the best healing spell in the game. My guess: expect this spell to change in the future once the devs get over their stubbornness, but probably not in 3.1.

- Spirit Mana regen model will be reworked. Probably not in 3.1, but later

- Hymns will be reworked. My conjecture is that this will involve a significant boost to Hymn of Hopelessness (possibly removing the party limit), and doing something completely different with Divine Hymn. Possibly new hymns as well to give priests some stackable utility on par with battleres, blessings or totems. Anything is possible, really, let's just hope they don't go the easy route increasing the healing done by Divine Hymn by 4.2% and calling it a day.

- Expect Dispel Magic to be a spell worth hotkeying in Uludar. The jury is still out on Mass Dispel. They can't make it required (read: felmyst) as not all guilds stack priests. But on the flipside, it's currently useless in PVE while being held against us as a major utility spell...

- Buff mechanics will change, so that offensive buffs are no longer dispel protected. Eventually, the binary dispel protection system will be phased out. One can only guess if a dispel will reduce the power or duration of existing buffs after 3.1.

- Party based heals will be phased out eventually. This will probably not happen in 3.1, but expect major changes to Prayer of Healing and Holy Nova.

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

Why isnt' there the same QQ when you trinket the sap and get blinded immediately?

There is :> but then again, there are more rogues out there who pvp than shadowpriests. Shadow pvp totally died after S2, and it was retarded to begin with in TBC.

Also, why is everyone stuck on that damn Dispersion.. it sucks. It'd suck even if you could dps while under the effect of Dispersion (because you can get stunned, silenced, kicked, pummeled, counterspelled, spellocked, hammered, silencing shott-ed, blinded, sapped, sheeped, cycloned). And really, a 6 second "toughness" vs opponents who have more than 1 way to stop your dps is retarded. Also, why isn't there a single caster class that dominates melee?

Melee has: means to stop caster dps, means to lower magic damage received, means to choose where and how to fight, better dps.
Caster hasn't: means to stop melee dps, means to lower melee damage, means to choose where and how to fight, better dps.

If we had the ability that allows us to dps without being interrupted (kick, pummel, cs, etc), then we're talking money. If we had the ability (on lower cooldown) to "soak" up some of that incoming damage (bubble or clos-like), then we're talking money. Without the same tools as our dire enemies, how the hell to compete? Dispersion was just another pve talent which, after getting nearly every best in-slot item, I don't use.

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

I agree with your summation about having no way to escape melee but I don't see how my suggestions or comments are 'going about it the wrong way'.

I could counter melee quite well if they took my fear and Divine Hymn off a shared cooldown... as it stands Melee can trinket one CC and then have an eternity on us and the only way to combat that is to pop dispersion and as it silences us it simply aids to us being killed.

As you pointed out any rogues that know what they're doign will keep hitting u to build combo points and then unleash on you with a full energy bar and combo points the moment you get out of it. You will find Ret pallys will just pop wings in response to dispersion as they have a talent that allows them to ignore 50% of damage reduction effects while under the effects of wings.

While your ideas of buffing the damage reduction on SF sounds nice I don't think the idea is to buff our ability to stay in melee because even with more damage reduction melee can stun and interrupt and generally make us useless. The idea is to give us tools that allow us to get to range... but it needs to be done in a priestly way, you can't simply give us mage blink... that doesnt sound very priestly at all.

Priests should be designed around defensive abilities... and in the case of shadow there should be some dark flavour to those abilities. I still feel priests should have better dot protection instead of trying to make them so powerful they deserve to be removed so easily. As it stands the 3 GCD's it costs to put up 3 dots is completely countered by 1 GCD of an immunity and while that doesnt sound like much that is a massive time advantage to the opponent... enough to make our dots next to useless.

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

- Disc Tree around 21 pt talent will be changed somehow. ImpDS in particular seems like a strong candidate for change.

either just boost the spellpower gained to 200% of the spirit granted (or even 300%, not sure on the exact amount of flametongue totem)..

.. or add a 10% intellect to spellpower effect, both would be fine for me (might be a bit harder to accomplish, should it be the priest only or will others benefit this aswell, maybe resulting in a to big spellpower boost for certain classes, ie shamans and paladins)

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

No. Aoe stun + 3 seconds on top of it. Can't you think of something more down to earth and normal? I can already see 5 shadow priests in 5v5 stunning, fearing and divine hymning everything on their way to clean 100:0 score.

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

I may be pessimistic, but personally I think all this talk of "major changes" is BS (except maybe for Spriests). They're talking about forcing holy priests to have a cast rotation....it's almost impossible to be an effective priest healer now without utilizing multiple spells and having a good rotation (this is a result of the CoH nerf, which was probably a good move, overall).

I hope blizz proves me wrong, but their mantra about wanting priests to be more utility-based tells me we're not getting anything earth-shattering (on the holy side).

Re: Whats Blizz Going to Do?

What is also dumb is that priest is actually not excelling in anything, I really don't see why they can't make up their mind what classes are for. I really hate it to have an utility class, and it used to be the best one in healing at least.